How Mastercard CEO is preparing for a world where AI agents do the shopping

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Mastercard (MA) CEO Michael Miebach vividly recalls working on long-term strategy as the new CEO of an iconic company smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

His office was inside an empty, sprawling headquarters a few miles from PepsiCo (PEP) in Purchase, N.Y., and next to a furry friend.

"It was a big learning. One of the things that I picked up was it's good to be in the office," Miebach said on the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast (see video above; listen below) inside that same sprawling headquarters. "So every day, I drove to the office, including my predecessor, who was our executive chair for a period of time. … One gentleman from our canteen company was brave enough to come in this office. It was five of us and a security person. One of my colleagues brought his dog because his dog sitter wasn't around any longer. And this was the think tank."

What a way to start a CEO tenure!

The German-born Miebach — who has spent his entire career in payment innovation and was Mastercard's chief product officer before snagging the corner-office job — has moved with focused speed to modernize the payments giant founded in 1966.